i don't know what laundry/cleaning supply they changed at work. Whatever it is, just touching it has given me full sleeves of hives up to my shoulders on both arms.

I'm allegic to work.

I was slathered with some sort of medicated cream, given the heavy duty Benedryl, and told to go home.

It's not my fault that "going home" involved going to Carrboro. First of all, I clearly need some antihistamines (sp?) if I am going to get through work tomorrow. And I'm out of my allergy meds.

Okay, the side trip to PTA Thrift was not necessary. But, damnit, I really didn't have a day off this week. I'm taking advantage of the time I have. I'm not contagious. I'm slightly loopy from the drugs, but right as rain (if itchy as hell) otherwise.

It was a good run. I have been missing Granma with an ache that feels new, not a couple of years gone. And I found two of the soup mugs we had when I was growing up. It was like she was comforting me from wherever she is now.

There was also an Emeril Lagasse cookbook in the ten cent book pile. She loved Emeril, which is funny, because she HATED spicy food. And a half-burned St. Jude candle, which will go on my altar with her and grandpa's ashes when I get home.

Yeah, still haven't made it home yet. I hear hippie energy is good for skin conditions.

Sometimes when I'm at work I think of my grandfather. When I started lifeguarding, my grandma told me that my grandpa was a lifeguard when he was in college and that he taught HER how to swim. I wasn't all that close to my grandpa when he was alive, but there have been many quiet little quirks that I've learned we have in common. Like how I don't appear to be allergic to poison ivy (he once told me a story about running up to a college professor with an armload of the stuff while they were out in the field), and how he had a constant current of wanderlust running through him, tangled with a love of home (and how those two things were at war in him all his life), how he loved to read more than anything and would read damn near anything, possibly including the occasional romance.

Sometimes the thought of what we carry from the past generations hurts a little, in a bittersweet kind of way.